Buffalo Palace (60 page)

If he was lucky, he might just stay out of the way of that solitary warrior long enough for the horseman to give up and turn back to rejoin the other three. Then Bass could lay to until the sun began to sink. From there he’d follow their trail to the spot where the Arapaho had gathered up that cavvyyard of horses and taken off with them. Having some idea where they were headed, Titus could
track them, even as it grew dark … perhaps even after nightfall.

One way or the other, odds were better than even that he could draw up to them by the next day. With both belt pistols, his rifle, and a pair of knives, he gave himself a chance at making a stand against the four warriors come the dark, especially if he could And them separated and making camp, gathering firewood, or just off to take a piss in the brush. No matter that it was four to one by the thinking of others, Bass figured he had to try.

He had been trusted with nearly all that the other three had in the world after all their seasons in the mountains. Wouldn’t they do the same for him? Hadn’t they done damn well the same when they had saved his life?

He had to try.

Whether it was coming through the Falls of the Ohio in that sleeting snowstorm with Ebenezer Zane’s boatmen … or helping to fight off that angry band of Chickasaw along the Mississippi—Bass always chose to try. Sometimes the worth of a man wasn’t so much measured in the successes or the failures he tallied … as it was in the simple fact that he had tried.

And when you stirred up that virtue with that solid notion of having had others put their trust in you—then there really was no decision left him. Really no choice but one. So in the end, if he were to go under before the sun fell any farther in the sky … by damn, he’d make him a good show of it.

Scratch drew himself up and rode on, ready to trail those horsemen and that cavvyyard until he could steal it back from the red niggers that had been dogging his life since that first winter with the Ute.

When Hannah snorted again, it near made him jump in his skin—so surprised was he that she was right behind him, loping up on the tail root of the saddle horse as if she’d gotten her second wind. Her wet nostrils flared as she snorted—rolling her eyes. And when Scratch turned back around in the saddle, there he was.

An Arapaho warrior—as big as life, brassy and bold. Slowly emerging from the timber and brush on the south bank as if he didn’t really expect Bass to bolt on him.

Then Titus realized this wasn’t the solitary warrior
who had stayed on his tail after the other three turned back to round up the pack animals Bass had freed. That horseman had been carrying a bow and handful of arrows in his right hand.

But this one held what appeared to be a smoothbore fusil—a big-caliber flintlock trade gun. As much as he picked at it for a moment the way a man might scratch at a scab crusting over an itchy wound, Titus could not recall ever seeing many of the Ute, nor those Shoshone at rendezvous, and certainly not any of the Arapaho, carrying firearms. Only bows, lances, war clubs.

For a heartbeat longer he gazed at the fusil the warrior held in his right hand, the butt resting down on the naked top of his brown thigh, there at the top of his legging where the flesh was exposed. Then as the Arapaho began to O his mouth to holler something, Scratch sawed the reins savagely and almost brought the weary, lathered horse down on a narrow strip of sandy island in the riverbed.

Collapsing to its knees, the horse struggled to get back up as Titus heard the warning cry turn to screeching behind him. The warrior was calling the other three—perhaps more than three.

Just as the saddle mount jolted up and sidestepped on the soft sand, fighting its halter and twisting its head violently, Bass felt as if someone struck him on the back of the right shoulder with a huge stone, maybe a heavy war club—something swung with tremendous weight and velocity. So much force that he felt it picking him out of the saddle, sensed the horse being yanked out from under him as sky and sand blurred together and his dizzy head began to hail with stars.

Just before the black hood of unconsciousness slipped over him, Scratch remembered sensing the brush he tumbled into—knowing somehow that he landed on the riverbank. Then, as he sprawled on the hot, sun-seared sand, his head was no longer dizzy. His shoulder no longer cried out in pain.

Nothing more than cool, blessed black.

He felt it on the sand beneath his cheek more than heard.

The slow, methodical step and scratch of a horse’s
hooves on the riverbed pebbles and rocks. Click, click, clack. Click. As much as he tried to open his eyes, everything turned out to be a blur.

The sound was behind him—coming closer, closer. Down in the shallow end of that dark pool where his mind lay, Scratch realized it was the warrior. Closing his eyes into slits to play possum was easy—his mind wasn’t ready to heft or tussle with anything more than lying there, listening….

Then the hoof sounds ceased. Except for the breeze nuzzling the leaves overhead, there was no other sound. No other noise … but for the whisper of soft-soled moccasins moving across the dry streambed. Then the hiss of some sound above his head, something whirling toward his head in the space of that single heartbeat.

Then the lights exploded and even his blurred vision was gone. The cool, blessed blackness cascaded over him again.

How it hurt for him to start that climb out of the thick, oozy black of unconsciousness.

Blinking his eyes once more, he found everything blurred with a paste of sand and sweat plastered against the side of his face. He closed them again, wishing—praying—for the sweet nothingness to envelop him once again. Better, so much better, than this searing pain.

He blinked once more, forcing his one eye open into a slit. Even that made his head throb with pain. Something moved in front of him. He heard it at the same time the wet form in his vision moved in a soggy blur across the harsh light that made him wince.

Some pain in keeping the eye open forced him to close it groggily—but that pain was nothing near the excruciating nausea that threatened to overwhelm him from the back of his mind. No—more so the back of his whole being.

He felt his right arm twisted out from his body at a crude angle, his legs lying akimbo … slowly, inch by agonizing inch, becoming aware of the rest of his body—then suddenly the back of his head again. The pain seeped through his skull at first, then was suddenly all-consuming. The rest of his body forgotten, Bass thought his head
felt as if it were one open, raw wound. As if he’d slid down a poplar tree as a boy, scraping off a generous slab of hide in the descent. Tender, pink, beginning to ooze with the first tiny bubblets of blood, a wound that began screeching out in pain louder than he could cry out with his voice … that’s the way the head was.

He dared not open his eyes, for every time he did, it hurt the head worse. Nor could he straighten the arm, numbed, unmoving—completely unresponsive. And his legs felt as if they each weighed more than a thousand pounds, compressed there into the sand and riverbed pebbles.

Maybe they were broke. Maybe everything on him was broke.

Again he heard the pony’s hooves scraping the rocks and wondered if the warrior was leaving again. Leaving him alive. Then the hooves stopped and Bass heard the scritch-scritching. A faint intrusion into the other faint sounds of that afternoon: breeze whisper, leaf rustle, sound of pony hooves and Indian breathing so close, and that scritch-scritching.

With the one eye not plastered shut with sweat and sand, Bass dared it open again. Wanting the warrior to go away, wanting the son of a bitch to take the pain and the bright, excruciating sunlight with him. Just let the shadows and the cool blackness return. Mayhaps, just to sleep. He couldn’t move—so maybe it would be best if he just went back to sleep.

But as he blinked again, the blur in that eye cleared somewhat, and he made out more than the watery movement of swimming colors. Slowly he figured out what he saw were the warrior’s legs … inches away—squatting so close, down on his haunches, for the most part turned away from Bass. Hunched over.

Titus blinked some more, trying desperately to raise his head from the hot sand stuck to the side of his face like burning grit. And in blinking a bit more, he looked across that slow rolling dance of the muscles across the warrior’s bare back, looking farther to make out the movement of the warrior’s bare arms as he crouched over something held in his hands. Working on it. Scraping it with his knife … making that scritch-scritching sound. All that Titus
could hear besides the restless hooves of the Arapaho’s pony, and the occasional rustle of breeze.

Scritch …

Then he took himself a look at what held the warrior’s attention there on the sandy bank beside the river. Something dangling from his left hand where he pressed it on top of his right thigh. Dangling like … a scalp.

How he wanted to get a hand up to rub the hot sweat and sand out of his eye, the thick goo he blinked to clear so he could tell-for sure—

Scratch’s breath seized in his chest, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever breathe again. It hit him as squarely and with as much force as had that blow to his back as he’d wheeled away from the warrior in the middle of the river. Like a stone war club, the realization slammed up alongside his head with its sudden, shocking power. Like a bright, meteoric light coming on inside his skull—shooting shards of hot, icy light in a thousand directions at once.

It’s … those long brown curls … damn—the son of a bitch has my hair!

How Titus wanted to cry out, to reach out, to lunge from where he lay. But the very most he could do was to fight off the black cloud a little longer as he grew so very, very weary again. His head grown so damned heavy, he had no hope of holding it up. With a stifled gasp Scratch let it lie on the hot sand—sensing its prickly heat beneath his wet cheek. Gasping for air, so afraid he was about to empty his belly then and there, Bass gulped down the nausea … staring all the time at the warrior crouched over his gory work.

Leastways, not the whole damn thing, he told himself. It looked small—wasn’t the whole thing from brow to nape.

Blinking again as the thick, warm ooze ran into the corner of his eye, Bass fought to stay awake long enough to get himself a good look at the warrior … the one who had done this to him. But the Arapaho was turned just so at his work. That bare brown back, the strong young shoulders. And those leggings, with the wide strip of porcupine quillwork down the outer seam—

That was what he began to study.

Concentrating through the sweat and sand and blood
he repeatedly blinked to clear. That particular strip of quillwork running all the way from the top to the bottom of the legging, there at the moccasin.

His eyes locked onto the toe of the moccasin—finding it had the same central design as the legging strip, the same colors.

Maybeso like Bird in Ground’s people—those colors were the bastard’s own power, his private medicine in both form and color.

If he could not move, could not raise a hand … at least he would vow to remember those colors, that pattern, those leggings and moccasins.

As the black seeped down over his consciousness again, Scratch stared, studied, and vowed he would never forget this warrior who had scalped him.

Maybe all that was left was for the son of a bitch to come over and finish him off right where he lay. Bass figured that was next, now that the coup had been counted and the scalp taken—just a quick flash of a sharp blade across the windpipe … or the less-than-pretty river rock bashing the side of his head to jelly.

Just a matter of moments now, he told himself as the black oozed down once more.

Death would be better than this waiting. Death better than not being able to defend himself. Death was better than …

Then black was all there was.

As if it were coming out of a dense winter fog, Scratch heard sound. Sodden and muffled.

It hurt his head to listen. So instead of giving heed to the noises around him, Bass kept his eyes closed and willed himself back into that warm immersion in nothingness. Everything else hurt too damn much.

He was dimly aware that more time slipped past. From the blackness he came to dwell on his heartbeat. How it grew in volume to crowd out the gentle rustle of the leaves suspended just overhead in the brush. Thrum-thrum … thrum-thrum. So loud, it pounded at his ears with a growing ache.

Slowly the awareness of aching grew. He hurt everywhere, so it seemed. There wasn’t a place Bass could not
feel pain as the warm bath of that unconscious immersion gradually cooled. Then his left leg and arm began to grow cold. And he sensed the breeze stir across the flesh on the right side of his face—like sunburn.

How long had he been lying there?

For some time he remained content to stay right where he was without pushing the ache: suspended halfway between the oblivion and the total awareness he was certain he would know once he allowed himself to awaken.

Beside him the water continued to whisper. Above him the leaves churkled from time to time as the cool breeze excited them. And from somewhere farther still some birds called. He imagined them sitting on branches somewhere above him, watching him. And with the way some calls moved past him too, Bass imagined them swooping by to look at him sprawled beside the river.

That’s why his leg had grown so cold. He twitched the foot. Feeling. Yes, the bottom of his left leg lay in the river. It and his left hand. Must be the way I come to rest here on the rocks, on the sand, he thought, painstakingly climbing his way out of the safe, dark pool of nonawareness.

First the leg. He struggled to drag it from the water there on the damp, sandy bench beside the river. Now for the arm. At first he flicked his fingers in the cool water—fully aware now that he had been right about the river, although his head was turned away from the water—but he had yet to attempt opening his eyes again.

Behind his lids he saw again a portrait of what he had seen the last time he’d opened them. As if it were being played out slowly—then stopped … slowly again—then stopped. The excruciating remembrance of that warrior scraping at … at his own scalp there beside Titus as he lay wounded on the bank. The Arapaho rose to his feet, stuffing the long brown-haired trophy beneath the narrow leather belt from which hung his breechclout, leggings, and the sheath for that knife as he bent over and swished the weapon in the river before plunging it home in the rawhide sheath.